A good deal of research has addressed how the awareness of presence, availability and location can improve coordination and communication. Much of this work has focused on how to improve collaboration between work teams. Several systems require cameras and microphones set up in the workspace, as well as broadband connections, to support transmission of video and/or audio. Other systems require either infrared or radio frequency sensors, or heavy data processing. Recently there has been a focus on more lightweight systems for mobile devices—lightweight installation as well as easy to use. A subset of these systems is summarized below:
Awareness Through Video and Audio
The Montage system {Tang, J. and Rua, M. (1994) Montage: Providing Teleproximity for Distributed Groups, Proceedings of CHI '94 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 37-43} provided lightweight audio and video “glances” to support a sense of cohesion and proximity between distributed collaborators. It used a hallway metaphor where one can simply glance into someone's office to see if it is a good time to interact. A similar metaphor was used in Cruiser {Root, R. (1988) Design of a Multi-Media Vehicle for Social Browsing. Proceedings of the CSCW '88 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 25-38; Fish, R., Kraut, R., Root, R., and Rice, R. (1992), Evaluating Video as a Technology for Informal Communication, Proceedings of the CHI '92 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 37-48} which enabled a user to take a cruise around each office. The purpose of the system was to generate unplanned social interactions. In Portholes {Dourish, P. and Bly, S. (1992) Portholes: Supporting Awareness in a Distributed Work Group. Proceedings of the CHI '92 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 541-547}, non co-located workers were periodically presented with updated digitized images of the activities occurring in public areas and offices. Some systems have focused on awareness solely through audio. Thunderwire {Ackerman, M., Hindus, D., Mainwaring, S., and Starr, B. (1997) Hanging on the 'Wire: A Field Study of an Audio-Only Media Space. Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), vol. 4, no.1, pp. 39-66} was an audio-only shared space for a distributed group. It was essentially a continuously open conference call in which anything said by anyone could be heard by all. ListenIN {Vallejo G. (2003) ListenIN: Ambient Auditory Awareness at Remote Places, M.S. Thesis, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Lab} uses audio to provide awareness of domestic environments to a remote user. In order to add a layer of privacy, the audio is classified and a representative audio icon is presented instead of the raw data; if the audio is classified as speech it is garbled to reduce intelligibility.
Location Awareness
Groupware calendars have been useful tools to locate and track colleagues. Ambush {Mynatt, E. and Tullio, J. (2001) Inferring calendar event attendance. Proceedings of the IUI 2001 Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, pp. 121-128} looked at calendar data to infer location and availability. It used a Bayesian model to predict the likelihood that a user would actually attend an event entered in his calendar. Calendars and Bayesian models have also been used to predict a user's state of attention {Horvitz, E., Jacobs, A. and Hovel, D. (1999) Attention-sensitive alerting. Proceedings of UAI '99 Conference on Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence, pp. 305-313}, Location-aware systems have used infrared or radio frequency sensors to keep track of electronic badges worn by people {Want R., Hopper A., Falcao V., and Gibbons J. (1992) The Active Badge Location System. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, vol. 10, pp. 99-102} or the Global Positioning System (GPS) {Marmasse, N., and Schmandt, C. (2000) Location-aware information delivery with comMotion, Proceedings of HUC2000 International Symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 157-171}. The Work Rhythms project {Begole, J., Tang, J., Smith, R., and Yankelovich, N. (2002) Work Rhythms: Analyzing Visualizations of Awareness Histories of Distributed Groups, Proceedings of the CSCW 2002 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 334-343} looks at location of computer activity to create a user's temporal patterns. Awareness of these patterns helps co-workers plan work activities and communication. When a user is “away”, the system can predict when he will be back.
Context and Mobile Telephony
The so-called context-awareness of computer systems falls very short of what humans can assess. As Erickson {Erickson, T. (2002) Ask not for Whom the Cell Phone Tolls: Some Problems with the Notion of Context-Aware Computing. Communications of the ACM, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 102-104} puts it: the ability to recognize the context and determine the appropriate action requires considerable intelligence. Several systems keep the human “in the loop” by enabling the potential recipient to select a profile appropriate for the context. In the Live Addressbook {Milewski, A. and Smith T. (2000) Providing Presence Cues to Telephone Users. Proceedings of the CSCW 2000 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 89-96} users manually updated their availability status and the location where they could be reached. This information was displayed to anyone trying to contact them. Although the updates were manual, the system prompted the user when he appeared to be somewhere other than the location stated. Quiet Calls {Nelson, L., Bly, S., and Sokoler, T. (2001) Quiet Calls: Talking Silently on Mobile Phones, Proceedings of SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 174-181 } enabled users to send callers pre-recorded audio snippets, hence attending a call quietly. The user could listen to what the caller was saying and send a sequence of standard answers. Another system that shares the burden of the decision between caller and callee is Context-Call {Schmidt, A., Takaluoma, A., and Mäntyjärvi, J. (2000) Context-Aware Telephony Over WAP. Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, vol. 4, no. 4, pp. 225-229}. As with most profile options, the user must remember to update the stated context.
Lightweight Text Communications
ICQ started as a lightweight text message web application in 1996. It has since grown into a multimedia communication tool with over 180 million usernames, and 30 million users accessing per month {AIM, October 2002. http://news.com.com/2100-1023-963699.html}. A user's availability is automatically set based on computer activity; however it can manually be overridden. Babble {Erickson, T., Smith, D. N., Kellogg, W. A., Laff, M., Richards, J. T. and Bradner, E. (1999) Socially Translucent Systems: Social Proxies, Persistent Conversation and the Design of “Babble”. Proceedings of the CHI '99 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 72-79} aimed to support communication and collaboration among large groups of people. It presented a graphical representation of user's availability, based on their computer interaction. Nardi et. al. {Nardi, B., Whittaker, S, and Bradner, E. (2000) Interaction and Outeraction: Instant Messaging in Action. Proceedings of the CSCW 2000 Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, pp. 79-88} studied the extensive use and affordances of instant messaging in the workplace. Desktop tools for managing communication, coordination and awareness become irrelevant when a user is not near their computer. Awarenex {Tang, J., Yankelovich, N., Begole, J., VanKleek, M., Li, F., and Bhalodia, J. (2001) ConNexus to Awarenex: Extending awareness to mobile users. Proceedings of the CHI '01 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 221-228} extends instant messaging and awareness information to handheld devices. It has the concept of a “peek”, an icon that appears in the buddy list indicating a communication request. Hubbub {Isaacs, E., Walendowski, A., Ranganthan, D. (2002) Hubbub: A sound-enhanced mobile instant messenger that supports awareness and opportunistic interactions. Proceedings of the CHI '02 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 179-186} is a mobile instant messenger that supports different sound IDs; the location data is updated manually.
Non-verbal Communication Systems
There are also some systems that have looked at ways to enhance interpersonal communication by adding physical feedback via actuators. ComTouch {described in the above-noted U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/825,012 entitled “Methods and apparatus for vibrotactile communication” filed on Apr. 14, 2004 by Angela Chang, Hiroshi Ishii, James E. Gouldstone and Christopher Schmandt, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,098,776 issued Aug. 29, 2006; and in the paper: Chang, A., O'Modhrain, S., Jacob, R, Gunther, E. and Ishii, H. (2002) ComTouch: Design of a Vibrotactile Communication Device. DIS '02 Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems, pp. 312-320} augments remote voice communication with touch. It translates in real-time the hand pressure of one user into vibrational intensity on the device of the remote user. The Kiss Communicator {Buchenau, M. and, Fulton, J. (2000) Experience Prototyping. DIS '00 Symposium on Designing Interactive Systems, pp. 424-433} enabled couples to send each other kisses. One person would blow a kiss into one side of the device and the remote piece would start to blink. The other person could respond by squeezing the communicator causing the lights to blink on the side of the original sender. The Heart2Heart {Grimmer, N., (2001) Heart2Heart. Winner of Intel Student Design Competition 2001. http://www.baychi.org/calendar/20010508/#1} wearable vests conveyed wireless “hugs” by simulating the pressure, warmth and sender's heart-beat as would be felt in a real embrace. Paulos {Paulos E. (2003) Connexus: A Communal Interface.} suggests a system with sensors (accelerometer, force sensing resistors, temperature, microphone for ambient audio) and actuators (Peltiers, bright LEDs, vibrator, “muscle wire”, speaker for low level ambient audio) to enhance non-verbal telepresence. This system will use Intel's Motes and will include a watch interface.
Watches
Whisper {Fukumoto, M., Tonomura, Y. (1999) Whisper: A Wristwatch Style Wearable Handset. Proceedings of the CHI '99 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 112-19} is a prototype wrist-worn handset used by sticking the index fingertip into the ear canal. The receiver signal is conveyed from the wrist-mounted actuator (electric to vibration converter) to the ear canal via the hand and finger by bone conduction. The user's voice is captured by a microphone mounted on the inside of the wrist. Commercial handsets built into wristwatches are also starting to appear, such as NTT DoCoMo's wrist phone or RightSpot {Krumm, J., Cermak, G., and Horvitz, E. (2003) RightSPOT: A Novel Sense of Location for a Smart Personal Object. Proceedings of Ubicomp 2003: Ubiquitous Computing, pp. 36-43}